Thousands of men and women in Wales are ditching studies and careers to become sex workers, new research reveals.
Researchers at Swansea University tracked down 400 off-street sex workers in brothels, escort agencies and over the internet
in Cardiff. They found:
- More than three-quarters of those questioned had qualifications including GCSEs, A-levels and even a law degree
- The majority had come into the sex trade from respectable careers, including one woman who had been a senior manager in a
private sector business
- None had been trafficked or coerced with many quoting high wages, flexible working hours and job satisfaction as their reasons for going into the trade
- The majority were working independently by advertising on
the internet, some of whom said they were doing it for fun
The results challenge the myths put about by anti-prostitution campaigners that men and women trapped in a dangerous trade by controlling pimps, financial insecurity and a downward spiral of drug and alcohol abuse.
Dr Tracey Sagar, a lecturer
in Criminology and Social Policy at Swansea University and co-author of the report, told WalesOnline the results called into question the effectiveness of current Government strategies, which are attempting to wipe out the sex trade for good. She said:
We're not talking here about women on the streets, who are extremely vulnerable to crime, violence, who often have serious problems with drug abuse and who do need our help.
The
women we spoke to for this research were articulate and knew exactly what they were doing -- no-one who we talked to had been pushed into it.
Many were giving up well-paid jobs to do it, quoting good money and flexible
working hours. One even said, 'I'm my own business, I'd never go back to a normal job.'
These women definitely don't want to be saved -- they have made a choice and we have to respect that choice -- Government policy
needs to recognise that the sex industry has been around for ever and it's not going to go anywhere.
Off-street sex workers are not the same as on-street and trafficked women and no-one policy will do for all.
Dr Sagar and her colleague Debbie Jones worked with HIV charity Terrence Higgins Trust Cymru to track down sex workers in Cardiff. Of the 395 men and women they found, an overwhelming 343 were working independently by advertising
their services on adult websites, while another 18 had placed ads in a local advertiser, 14 were with an escort agency and 20 were working out of seven well-known massage parlours in Cardiff.
Dr Sagar said that these figures barely scrape the
surface of the industry, with many more brothels and escort agencies existing that did not respond to the survey, as well as an invisible majority of prostitutes selling their services via dozens of specialist adult websites.
